badger11’s take on anime

This episode finds Satou and Hitomi meeting up with three other guys from the website Hitomi goes to. They’re here for the “off-line” meeting. They take a train and then boat out to an island that one of the group owns. With the exception of Satou, everyone is withdrawn, barely talking unless they have to. Satou, is the Engerizer Rabbit compared to the rest of the group. Not surprising since he thinks he’s going to start a new life with Hitomi. After getting to the island, they all pretty much hang out on the beach, “having fun during the last day of our lives” as one of the group says. While on the island, Satou decides to end his hikikomori life by trying to talk to each of these guys. He gets shutdown pretty quick and flashes back to his last year in high school where you can basically see the start of Satou withdrawing from society.

Back home, Hitomi’s boyfriend gets off work early and heads to her apartment. Finding it empty, he eventually starts searching around on her computer and find the website and the details about the offline meeting and Hitomi’s mention of basically visiting Satou. Over at Satou’s place, a cute but sad Misaki is walking up to Satou’s apartment (probably to collect the penalty fee from Satou since he cancelled the contract early). Yamazaki comes screaming out of his apartment and banging on Satou’s door because they’re late for the Natsucomi fest. Misaki tells him that Satou took off with a woman. Yamazaki doesn’t believe it until he realizes that Satou would follow Senpai shopping if she asked him to (not his words but then I’m just projecting). Hitomi’s boyfriend shows up and tells them about the offline meeting. Back at the meeting, Satou starts to build a bonfire. After talking with one of the others about “having fun during the last day of our lives”, Satou finally figures out exactly what the purpose of the trip is.

In this episode, we see three groups. Satou, the other islanders, and Yamazaki, Misaki, and Hitomi’s boyfriend. And they’re all trying to end something. Satou trying to end his hikikomori life, the other islander are planning to go offline, and the the last three will probably do attempt to do something to end the paths Satou and the gang are on. I believe that the third group will actually succeed in intervening and stopping Satou and Hitomi from the direction they’re headed in. And that means Satou will still remain a Hikikomori. And I pretty much belive that the off-line group will decide to not go through with it. So everyone wins but Satou. But I reserve the right to be wrong.

Is it just me or do these two go to the same stylist ?